A NOVEL AND TWO ROMANCES.*
WE almost wish that we could have headed this review "Three Romances," for it is in the field of romance that Mr. Maclaren Cobban has done his best and most memorable work. We wonder whether he has read Mr. Stockton's amusing little tale, "His Deceased Wife's Sister." It is about a young man of letters who wrote short stories for the magazines which had a modest but satisfying success. Indeed, his literary income was so regular that he felt justified in marrying, and in the exaltation of spirit induced by the honeymoon he wrote a story that far surpassed all his previous efforts. It was a tremendous success ; but, alas ! the results were disastrous. The editors of high-class maga- zines, who had of late always accepted his manuscripts, now returned them ; they could not publish anything so palpably inferior to "His Deceased Wife's Sister." Editors of a lower rank, whom he had previously despised, but to whom he now turned, followed suit, and justified their action by the same plea : they too must have something as good as " His Deceased Wife's Sister." How the poor young man extricated himself from the difficulty mast be learned from Mr. Stockton's amusing pages; but up to this point the story is an apologue which may be of interest to Mr. Cobban. He has written The Bed Sultan, and though we sincerely hope that it may not prove to him what "His Deceased Wife's Sister " proved to Mr. Stockton's hero, it is a hope that trembles. For, as we intimated in reviewing the book, it was a romance of real originality and power which raised all sorts of expectations, whereas The Bur- den of Isabel, though by no means a bad novel as novels go, is a comparatively commonplace affair. Isabel herself is one of those self-reliant girls who have for the time being supplanted the old clinging heroine; and she is not only self-reliant, but— to use a word which is hateful, but indispensable—reliable also. The " burden " of the title might well be in the plural, for Isabel is a young woman with an amiable mania for protect- ing people who are less wise than herself from the conse- quences of their folly, and her hands are naturally pretty full. To travel to Ratcliff Highway to drag her father out of the opium-den in which the once-brilliant journalist has dulled his brain and ruined his will, is but the beginning of her labours, which culminate in her offer to marry her cousin (though she has given all her love to another man) in order to save her uncle from bankruptcy, a sacrifice which is finally commuted for a gift of 250,000, which leaves her free to give herself to the lover of her choice. It is impossible that a story like this —at once conventional and improbable—should be made to look convincing ; but, of course, Mr. Cobban makes the beat of it that can be made, and the book is, at any rate, perfectly free from the one unpardonable sin of dullness. The shrewd though simple-minded Lancashire manufacturer is a portrait the lifelikeness of which will be recognised by every North-country reader who is familiar with the type ; and Mr. Cobban manages to give not only intelligibility, but narrative interest, to the story of a "cotton corner" in the Liverpool market. Indeed, there are a number of good things in The Burden of Isabel, and our appreciation of them is perhaps unduly dulled by our memories of The Bed Sultan, "His Deceased Wife's Sister."
Mr. Rider Haggard certainly does not fall below himself in Montezuma's Daughter, which is full from cover to cover of the special kind of interest which he knows so well how to excite. Nevertheless, we think we discern a certain element of weakness in what some readers will probably regard as a source of strength. One of the legacies of Puritanism is a certain sense of something like shame in enjoying a
• (1.) The Burden of Isabel. By J. Maelaren Cobban. 3 vols. London : Chatto and Windns.—(2.) Montexuma's Daughter By H. Rider Hagaard. London: Longmans, Green, and 0o.—(3.) Wee to the Conquered ! B.O. 73-71. By Alfred Clark. 2 vols. London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. story which provides absolutely nothing but imaginative pleasure. If, however, the mere narrative interest is adul- terated or reinforced by some more solid constituent of instruction or edification, this feeling of shame is modified ; and men and women in later middle age can remember a time when the general prejudice against fiction was relaxed in favour of the Waverley Novels for the assigned reason that they held in solution a considerable quantity of solid history. Now 3fontezurna'8 Daughter is in one respect like Waverley or Quentin Durward; it deals with various events which actually did happen, and if there should be on British soil any unhappy wretch who has never been kept out of bed by the entrancing Prescott, he will certainly learn something from Mr. Rider Haggard's story of the most romantic episode in all history. But then it seems to us that the special mission of this delightful writer—for delightful he is, in spite of his weak- ness for gory horrors—is not to decorate fact, but to create fiction ; and his creative energy is freest, and therefore most effective, when, as in She and King Solomon's Mines, he sweeps facts out of his way, and allows himself an entirely free hand. William Blake, that great inventor with the pencil, found Nature "in his way," and we should think that Mr. Rider Haggard must have the same feeling with regard to history ; but in his latest book he voluntarily enters into rivalry with a historical record which, in the matter of ex- citing narrative, beats most novels hollow. The conquest of Mexico is a sensational romance of fact, and to turn it into a sensational romance of fiction is very like painting the lily and gilding gold. Still, when we think how rare a thing is a story which really carries us out of ourselves, and for the time takes us into a world of adventure where everyday worries are forgotten, it seems almost shamefully ungrateful to speak of Montezuma's Daughter in words that savour of depreciation. Mr. Rider Haggard tells how Thomas Wing- field, of Ditchingliam, in the county of Norfolk, crossed the seas in pursuit of the Spanish fiend, De Garcia, who had murdered his mother ; how, after adventures of peril and horror in Spain and on the ocean, he found himself in Mexico ; how he was honoured as a god, and set apart for sacrifice ; how he was rescued from the sacrificial slab as the knife was descending, married the beautiful Otomie, of the Royal house, and fought against the Spaniards ; how from captivity and torture he escaped, to become the King-consort of a tribe of half-savage warriors ; and how, after witnessing the death of his wife and the divine vengeance on his villainous foe, he returned to Norfolk and to his early love. It will be seen what opportunities are here, and it need hardly be said that Mr. Haggard takes full advantage of them. The movement of the action is too rapid to allow of the deliberate picturesqueness which is so notable in She, Cleopatra, and the World's Desire ; but every- where we find the old swing, the familiar gusto, the almost marvellous fertility in narrative crisis and dramatic situation. Even Mr. Haggard has never excelled that wonderful chapter, "The Last Sacrifice of the Women of the Otomie."
Purveyors of classical romance generally choose for their period one of the first three or four Christian centuries. Mr. Alfred Clark, in his able and interesting story, Woe to the Conquered, achieves a certain effect of freshness by going back to B.C. 73-71, and choosing as the basis to his narra- tive the rising of the slaves under the Thracian, Spartacus,—a theme which, so far as we can remember, has not been pre- viously treated by any writer of fiction, and which has the advantage, not only of freshness, but of adaptability to the ends of symmetrical and effective narrative. Mr. Clark has very naturally idealised his central character, for though we do not know much about Spartacns, we may be pretty certain that the sometime bandit of Thrace was a very different person from the high-minded and chivalrous hero who figures in these volumes. It is, however, a case in which a little imaginative licence is fairly allowable. The character as it stands has not only dignity, but consistency and likeliness, and is effectively relieved against the crowd of profligate desperadoes whom for a time Spartacns was able to discipline into a formidable and long-victorious army. Cardinal Newman, Charles Kingsley, and the first Lord Lytton are almost the only writers who have produced stories of classical times which do not smell of the lamp, and there is the usual odour hanging around some of Mr. Clark's • The French War and the Revolution. By William Milligan Sloane, pages, but it is not strong enough to be disagreeable ; L.H.D., Protest= in Princeton University. London: Sampson Low and Co. and, indeed, Woe to the Conquered is not only an admirably planned, but a very vivaciously told story. Specially spirited is the description of the revolt of the gladiators, which was the first act of the rising; and, as a matter of course, Mr. Clark gives us some of those scenes in the amphitheatre, which no romancer either of the later Republic or of the Empire can bring himself to forego. Probably most readers who have passed the age of bloodthirsty youth are a little tired of these orgies of carnage, and the death of Coins Cotta at the hand of his friend is exceptionally sickening ; but the fight between the Libyan giant, Juba, and the lion is capital, for the combatants are fairly matched, and it is an affair of genuine sport rather than of mere butchery. We have, in fact, found Woe to the Conquered very pleasant reading, and we think that our feeling will be general.
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